ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the direct development of SME capacity to participate in procurement opportunities. The design of small- and medium-scale enterprises (SME) development programmes needs to include careful targeting in the choice of markets and choice of participating SMEs, and in aligning this supply side of the equation with the available procurement opportunities. Experience suggests that effective local SME support programmes target their assistance to SMEs with a realistic possibility of providing goods or services in their industry on a genuinely competitive basis. In deciding what markets and which SMEs to target for SME development, a further consideration is the availability of procurement opportunities of prospective customers. Effective SME development programmes are therefore invariably informed by some type of gap analysis of what goods and services are needed by the operators and what products either are or, more importantly, could be supplied by local SMEs.
